Asteroid named after Canterbury man

A late reverend’s dedication to astronomy has forever been remembered by an asteroid named after him.

Reverend Ian Crumpton, who died age 82 in December last year, is a former president of the Canterbury Astronomical Society and helped establish a New Zealand network of cameras that help NASA map meteor showers.

The asteroid numbered 32150 has been named Crumpton in his honour.

Asteroids are sometimes called minor planets. They are left over from the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago. They range in size from less than 1km to more than 1000km.

Crumpton has a diameter of about 10km. It is located in the main asteroid belt, which is between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and contains a large number of asteroids.

Wife Tricia Crumpton said her husband would have been surprised at the news of the asteroid naming, formally announced by the International Astronomical Union.

“He just quietly got on with his astronomy, it was quite a passion for him. The thing I think that was a bit sad is he wasn’t here to appreciate it.”

Ian had been a Presbyterian minister, who served in Dunedin, Gisborne and Christchurch. 

While serving at a parish in Spreydon he had built his own observatory out of paper mache on a wooden frame behind the manse. Then at West Melton, where they had moved about 30 years ago due to the area’s stunning night skies, he built another observatory in his backyard with a slide-off roof.

What he liked about astronomy was how amateurs could make a difference to the worldwide body of knowledge by what they observed in the night skies.

“If you have that enthusiasm, the sky is the limit,” Tricia said.

Ian was crucial in establishing and operating the Cameras for All-sky Meteor Surveillance (CAMS) New Zealand for the NASA Ames Research Centre.  

Automated video surveillance of the night sky is sent from the cameras, which are at areas including West Melton, Ashburton and Tekapo, to the research centre. The data is used to derive the geometrical orbit of each recorded meteor in the Solar System.

Canterbury University astronomer Jack Baggaley explained 32150 was the number of the asteroid that has now been named Crumpton.

“Asteroids are numbered 1 to about 50,000 roughly in order of their discovery. The first named Ceres was discovered in the year 1801.”